New Yorker Fiction Review #287: "Different People" by Clare Sestanovich

Review of the short story from the Jan. 30, 2023 issue of The New Yorker...

I was glad to see Clare Sestanovich published again in The New Yorker (even if the fact of her being on the magazine's staff makes this akin to literary nepotism), I enjoyed the only other short story I've read and reviewed by her, called "Old Hope" from back in 2019. 

In this story "Different People," Clare Sestanovich attempts the daunting challenge of writing from a child's point of view; something that's always tempting for a writer, at some point, but very easy to do clumsily. What usually happens is the writer attempts to write in what they think is the simplified, refracted view of reality that serves their purposes in the story, but which ends up just sounding like exactly what it is: an adult trying badly to imitate a child's inner world because they -- like we all do -- have forgotten and can't really get it back. 

Sestanovich solves this problem by making the main character -- a 12 year old girl -- have essentially the same type of complex, sophisticated inner world as a full grown adult. In the process preventing herself from having to undertake the cringe-worthy business of "child-izing" her writing and also (most importantly) creating a truly interesting character. 

This story had me from the very opening line:

"When Gilly was young, she lied to her diary."

As someone who has kept a diary (though I prefer the more adult term journal TYVM) all my life (and was once young), this line immediately struck a chord. Inherent in the process of writing a diary is the idea that you are divulging your unfiltered innermost thoughts, feelings, daily activities, and interactions, so that you can read them again someday or at least so you can get them out of your system and onto the page, as a catharsis. 

But what about a person who lies to their own diary? What kind of a person does that, and for what reason? That act seems to betray the very purpose of self-reflection, honestly, to say nothing of the purpose of diary writing. From that first line, we know immediately that we are dealing with a complex character.

Told in close third-person narration, we watch through Gilly's eyes as her parents -- Peter and Lisa -- live a relatively conflict-free life. Although Gilly lies to her diary, writing in it that they fight a lot, they don't. Instead Peter plays the piano at night while Lisa flits in an out of the room occasionally asking him a question or mentioning something offhand. However, neither we nor Gilly realize that trouble is actually afoot, and her parents reveal to her -- in the same sanitized, hermetically-sealed way in which they seem to live their lives -- that they are separating. 

This news comes as an unwelcome shock to Gilly not only because her family is breaking up, but because -- it would seem -- she wrote this situation into existence. 

"She had pretended to be an adult, but pretending was no longer a game or a lie or a choice. She had wanted something to happen and now it had." 

A good friend of mine -- an only child -- once told me that when he was a kid he was convinced he could move things with his mind. Furthermore, he said that in his experience, this mistaken belief was common among only children. Sestanovich plays with a few different themes in "Different People." But to me she is clearly playing with this childish notion of omnipotence. There is simply no way that Gilly caused her parents' divorce by creating, in her diary, the illusion that they fought constantly. But did she sense something under surface, subconsciously? Was she, without realizing it, giving voice to her parents' pent-up frustrations that maybe they themselves should have been venting? 

There is a lot to like in this short story. Lots more than I have the capacity to dissect on this blog. But, basically what we have here is a character study of an adolescent girl developing her inner life. her view of the world, and -- who knows -- acquiring a bit of her own personal baggage. Most people who lived through the divorce of their parents will recognize statements like the following line:

"Gilly became two people. Her time was divided exactly down the middle, because Peter and Lisa believed, above all, in being fair. Half the time she was one person and half the time she was another. It is possible that no one else noticed the difference."

In other words, Gilly is become self aware -- on behalf of two selves, mind you -- at the same time as she is starting to wonder about her place in the broader world. Does anyone else notice what's going on inside me? Can they possibly? We can see how these questions will spin and spin and spin long strands of thread that -- over years -- can and will wrap themselves into a knot inside her that might take years, decades, a lifetime to unravel. 

I can't help but wishing we got more of Gilly's story. Maybe even a full novel's worth. I would like to Gilly in college, or as a young adult in some big city, and what becomes of her as she moves through adulthood and into middle age. But even for a short story of this size, there is enough to unpack here. 

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.